FRANKFURT, March 7 (Reuters) - Planned U.S. tariffs on steel send a bad signal on free trade but won’t have a big impact on Siemens, the German company’s chief executive said on Wednesday.

CEO Joe Kaeser told CNBC that the tariffs send a “disturbing message” and could hit business confidence.

“As far as Siemens in the U.S. is concerned, we are not that massively impacted, and I do not believe that our customers or our employees will suffer from any of those topics,” Kaeser said. “It is probably more about the confidence our customers have in investing into new business.”